MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 956, 16 May 1889, Page 37

MULTUM IN PARVO.

—Very few of the bottles thrown into the gea with messages enclosed are ever found, for generally barnacles accumulate upon them and sink them. —It is stated in the Koman Catholic papers that there are now in their church 865 exclusively German parishes in the United States, and 1063 " mixed " parishes under German priests. — Kvery French bank has a photograph of erery employe. The morphine craze is growing in America. A Portland, Maine, manufacturer has made and sold 25,000 hypodermic needles since 1886. '. t ■ . 4 The annual increase of the Esquimaux population is estimated to be not more than 60 or 80. —The splendid advantages possessed by the Lick Observatory, in addition to its magnificent equipment, may be gathered from the fact that 200 nights in the year are clear enough for photographing the heavens. Every railway clock in the' Southern Pacific States is now controlled from the clock' in this observatory. It will be interesting to watch exactly how much work will be forthcoming from this sumptuous little palace of science. ■ —Before the late election in Paris a number of daiuty little buns were offered {or sale on the boulevards. They were wrapped in pink paper with- the inscription: "What Boulanger promises, and how he performs." Oq bitting into the bun you found it to contain chopped;hay and chaff.— La Presse. — The Scotch pebble jewellery which the autumnal tourist buys in the Edinburgh 6hops is to a large extent of Warwickshire make, the stones being disinterred out of Bhenish traps and polished in German mills, and set in Birmingham. The railway companies of England receive, nearly £2,000,000 a year from .season ticket-holders. —Electricity is employed in India to prevent snakes from entering dwellings. Before all the doors and around the house <two wires are laid, isolated from one another and connected with an induction apparatus. When the snake attempts to enter the house or go under it he completes the circuit as he crawls over the two wires, and i£ the shock he gets doesn't kill him it is likely to effectually frighten him away from the premises. —It is said that a stoker on an ocean steamer wears out in six years, though he may possibly live two years more if he is a very strong rugged young man when he begins. All attempts thus far to substitute machinery for manual labour in filling the furnaces have been failures. The pay is £4 lGs per month. —It is said that there are four manufactories o£ aniline colours in the United States. Up to the tariff revision of 1863, the business was uniformly profitable ; but since that revision the protection has been insufficient, and the business has languished. Its _is barely kept alive, because of their inability to compete with foreign ch>ap labour. The difference in cost between Europe and America is as 100 to 139. — A. steamer was sunk near the. Canary Isles. ' A diver has brought' up three bodies of those who could not rise in' the water owing to the quantity of gold which they had secreted under their clothes. One man's, vest wa^ jlined with gold pieoes. A woman's clothes concealed a large bag of gold, and a man's belt was heavily weighted with specie, r —In an interesting paper on the medicolegal aspects of some injuries of the spinal cord, read before the Medico-Legal Society at Chicago, it was stated that within a period of five years English railway companies have paid in damages in cases, of alleged injury to the spinal cord the enormous sum of £2,200,000. — Dr, King, the Bishop of Lincoln, who has been brought to trial for alleged violations of the ecclesiastical law, is described by the Pall Mall Gazette as having one of those spiritual faces Which which one cannot look at without feeling the better for it, and which positively beam with benevolence. And then, in the next column, the Pall Mall prints a portrait of him which looks like a cross between Fagin and Bill Sykes. —The new-p owder which is now used in the German army for sifting into the shoes and stockings of the foot soldiers, consists of three parts of salicylic acid, 10 parts starch, and 87 parts pulverised soap-stone. This mixture keeps the feet dry, prevents chafing, and rapidly heals sore spots. —Mr Parnell is the owner of 3650 acres of land in the county of Wicklow. Of this 2612 acres are let, the rental of which is £960 2s lid, and the valuation £891 ss. In 1882 there were charges on the estate to the extent of £13,000, and it was understood that this amount was cleared off out of the proceeds of the "tribute" of £40,000 which was then initiated.

—In the famine districts of China the people live on a mixture of grain, chaff, and wheat sprouts, and in some places upon the fresh blades of wheat of the autumn planting. —Every day evidence is accumulating of an increased partiality on the part of the public for' light beers. Among the upper classes it is common to hear that English beer is delicious, but that it is too potent to be taken with impunity in the middle of the day. Again, among the great supporters of and believers in beer, the working classes, there has been shown for some time past a marked preference for light Yarmouth ales in preference to the traditional " heavy wet"— the "black champagne " of the poet. -—A paper at Portsmouth states that a firm of cabinet-makers in that place was recently invited to tender to the Admiralty for certain tables; that in its reply it protested against the system of " tipping " offioials to which tendering firms were compelled to lend themselves ; and that the firm was thereupon struck ofl! the Admiralty list. —The great central station at London which is to supply electric light on an extenB ive scale, for the city is being built with facilities for furnishing 250,000 incandescent lights in the near future, and a final capacity of 1,000,000 lamps. — OUff dwellings are found in great numbers in -Morocco which are now, and probably hava been, inhabited from the time of their first construction, these dwellings in all particulars are like those found in Arizona $nd New Mexico in America.

— It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship the moon and not the sun ; a great number worship both ; but no tribes are known to adore the sun and not the moon.

— M. de Tchihatchef, a Russian writer, ateserts that the average flow of petroleum in the Baku region is 88,000 barrels per day, as against 25,300 barrels in the United States; —It is one of the curiosities of human nature that although all men are liars they can none of them bear to be told so of themselves.— R L. Stevenson.

—The Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper ever attempted, was issued in London in 1702, its office being near the locality of the present Times office. It consists of a single page of two columns, and professed to giye foreign news only. —There is a cradle in New York that has rocked over 19,000 babies. It began to rock 19 years ago, when the Sisters of Charity started a little fonndling hospital on Twelfth Street, New York, with sdol in the treasury^

— Bumour says 90,000 Americans have already booked for the Paris Exhibition via Liverpool. 1 —Professor Ruata, of Perugia, is authority for the statement that there are annually in Italy nearly 300,000 cases of typhoid fever, of which number 27.0U0 prove fatal, On£third of the persons in Italy who reach the age, of 45 have the fever, and in some dis■trict's more than 3 per cent, of the population die from this one cause. ,

— A Hindoo journal says that one of the most difficult feats under the sun is to identify' Europeans, because they are so much alike with their loud, glaring colour. — The Donegal Grand Jury has awarded to the widow of Inspector Martin, who was murdered at Gwedore, a sum of £4000, to be levied on the county. A constable named Carey, who was much injured, was awarded £1000.

—South America is just now attracting large numbers of Irishmen, most of whom are settling in the Argentine Eepublio. ! — The, .ear^lyi ßoman church on the heights of Dover, the oldest Christian fabric in the country, has just been restored, and reopened for public worship. Its foundations were laid 15 centuries ago, and the spot where the Roman soldiers' altar formerly stood, and the window through which the sentry could see whether the lamp was burning before it, can still be pointed out. —Lord Palmerston had 58 years of public life. Gladstone must have another year in .order to tie thfe score. — A bush, usually of ivy, was formerly hung out at the doors of taverns, probably in allusion to Bacchus, to whom the ivy bush was s'aCred. The proverb that " good wine needs no bush " merely means that where the wine is good no bush or other sign -is necessary, for ( its reputation would draw customers without public advertisement. ' '. —In the United States .between 14,000/an'd 15,000 women are fulfilling the duties of commercial travellers. . ' —One of Scotland's rare'marshy plants, the Scheuchz'erta palustris, a genus of the order of arrow grasses, has, according to Professor Hillhouse, become extinct., . It was to ,be found 'only 'on the moor of Methven in Pertti- : shire ; but some 300 ' or 400 black-headed gulls have settled down on this moor anH annihilated every trace of vegetation. —The Swedish Cremation Society was founded in 1882. It now numbers 3000 members and subscribers. —Taking all London's food together— 4he fish, the meat, ;the poultry, the provisions, the vegetables, the fruit, the groceries, and the bread— we get an annual consumption of close on 1,500,000 tons a year. 'Add to thiW the drink— excluding the water— and dividing by 365, we have a daily consumption of 5800 tons. —Wood pavement lasts about six years in streets where the traffic is very heavy. — It is asserted that nearly all the idols now worshipped in India 'are of Englisp manufacture, ; — A scientific fact has been demonstrated in piping natural gas. It has been shown that when pipes of one size have been used about 81b per mile of the pressure is lost; but by using the telescope system (smaller pipes at the well, and gradually increasing in size toward the point of consumption) the loss of pressure is reduced to 31b per mile. —Services for the deaf are held in the Church Institute at Sheffield. The preacher speaks into a bell-shaped receptacle, from which tubes convey the sound of his voice to the ear of each person present. —Twenty of the members of European royal families are now under treatment for mental disorders. —The places of worship in England and Wales will accommodate about 10,500,000 people. —Mr Labouchere genially describes General Lord Wolseley as "a perfect gas - bag of self - conceit." —President Harrison seems to be pretty nearly as badly beset by hungry office-seekers as poor Garfield was. Washington is once again full of them. It rests upon the authority of JMr Blame that there were 1,000,000 applications for office registered in Washington during the few months of Garfield's Presidential life. It will presently be interesting to know how far the record is being beaten. — It is estimated that in Lancashire and Yorkshire alone there are, nearly 20,000 amateur bandsmen. —The makers of jute bagging in America formed a trust .about a year ago, and a substitute for jute was sought. It was ascertained that cloth made from the fibre of Southern pine needles was as good as jute for bagging cotton. The result is the jute mills are beginning to close. —Nearly £1,000,000 of British capital, Consul-general Crowe tells us, has been invested in the tobacco industry of Cuba during the past year. !

Poisonous Hatb Kbstobkbs akd Dibs.— The public have frequently been warned in medical and other papers, against using hair renewers ano restorers, which being composed of poisonous and mineral ingredtenta have a moßt detrimental effect on the hairand scalp. The only safe preparation is Rowxaitos' Maoamab Oil, which nearly 100 years trial has proved to be perfectly harmless and most benefloial in all oases of loss of Itlalr, scurf, and dandruff ; it prevents and arrests baldness and produces a luxuriant and glossy head of hair;' alto sold in a 1 eolden colour. Rowxatos' Kalydob produces toft and delicate ildn and removes all oataneom *fe«sihe». AikoheadttoforßQWUifDS'wfciolei,